


At the edge of the world

by linaerys



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 19:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5468252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/pseuds/linaerys





	At the edge of the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betweenthebliss](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betweenthebliss/gifts).



The wind on these high cliff tops blew so strongly that it took all of Jack’s concentration to keep the car on the road. There were no trees in the Orkney Islands, just hills and scrub, cliffs and sheep, peat bogs that look like grass but have infinite divots and cutouts to turn an ankle. Men have been cutting sod here since before anyone had heard of Australia, leaving longer, just the right size to hide a body, or two, or in this case Miss Fisher, and a murderer she had tied up with a length of twine. 

“What would you have done if I hadn’t come along?” Jack asked her when they bundled the prisoner into the back of the car. 

“Flagged down a passing motorist, of course.” Her lips were blue. Rain had been falling all day, soaking through her fine camel coat. From the look on her face, she was keeping herself from shivering through force of will alone. 

“Did you see many of those?” he asked. She was saved from answering by a touchy bit of driving down a road that had turned into a mud slick. It was a measure of how cold and drained she was that she let him drive his rental.

Jack had a long time on his journey from Melbourne to think, and plan, and think better of this foolish idea that he should go after Miss Fisher. She said it herself: it was a wide world, full of entertaining men, and she could easily get lost in it, and never return to Australia. Why should she need to, with a full bank account, and no need of protection from anyone? 

Furthermore, how could she expect him to leave behind everything to go after her? He was a working man, with responsibilities. He hadn’t become a policeman on a whim--it was his life. His whole life, lacking a wife, or the children they had planned. Lacking Miss Fisher, though, it was empty. Empty enough that after a week without her, he was moved to take stock of his plans and assets and weigh them against the likelihood of never seeing her again. 

Life as a bachelor did not require much money, and he had plenty stocked away. He had hardly taken a week's holiday since restarting his career after the war. No one would begrudge a longer absence now.

Which was how he found himself on a boat in the middle of the choppy North Atlantic, crossing from Scotland to the Orkney Islands, to where Mrs. Fisher said her daughter had last sent a postcard from. She had reunited with some fast friends--fast more in terms of their speed than their attachment to Phryne, said Mrs. Fisher--and flown north in an alarming contraption, to these islands that could only be reached by boat or air.

Jack had trouble picturing her there, among rugged rocks and sea, the wind tugging at her hat, the brightness of her skin and lips contrasting with the brown, green and gray background. 

Or could he picture it all to well. There was nowhere she could not fit, for a time, until she decided to fit somewhere else. It was not that her world could never touch his, it was that any other world could too. And she was very distractible.

So he found himself, six weeks after kissing her goodbye on that sunny field, with his hat soggy from the sea mist that even in summer locked these islands into a perpetual winter. Or what would pass for an Australian winter. Winter here must be far harder, and it approached. Soon, surely, Miss Fisher would be gone off somewhere else, and he had come too far to lose her again.

"They're strange here," the ship's captain said to Jack as the island came into view. "You know what they call the mainland? This--this little Island. Not Scotland. They're not true Scots. They're--they might as well be Australian, I think."

He was a garrulous man for a Scot. Jack would have prefered someone more taciturn, and to be alone with his thoughts. He found the Orcadians nothing like Australians.

Kirkwall had a charming little harbor, at least when the mist lifted enough to see it: stone quays and houses stacked up one above the other as the streets rose quickly, until cliffs began and they could rise no more. A vertical island, so different from his horizontal one. This place wore its dangers all too plainly, in harsh weather and bruising rocks. No burrowing spiders, though. Miss Fisher would be glad of that.

He assumed she was staying in the best hotel in Kirkwall and he was right. He arrived as the endless twilight was settling in toward night, and learned that Miss Fisher was indeed staying there, but she was out for the day on a drive, and expected back on her own time. The prim woman with iron-gray hair who ran the hotel seemed rather charmed by Miss Fisher, against her will.

“She’s a detective,” said the woman, with a bit of maternal pride. “She’s gone off to catch a murderer.”

So Jack enquired down at the police station, and learned enough to have an idea of where to find her. 

“Her murderer won’t be there, and then she’ll be cold and wet,” said the desk sergeant, a man with the sour look of one who expected better than what life had given him. “Woman thinks she’s a detective.” 

The fellow yielded up her probable location with only a little prodding. It was a bit harder to convince him to loan Jack his car and a map, but if he did not, Jack reminded him, the sergeant himself would have to go out looking for the titled Englishwoman in the rain, and he wouldn’t like that very much. He would like his life even worse if some harm came to the Honorable Miss Fisher.

So Jack borrowed the car and found her. He often had fantasies of rescuing her from one of her follies, but when the reality occurred, he was far too worried about the way she seemed to fade in and out of awareness. He would have taken her back to her hotel and called a doctor, had she not insisted that they see their man in jail first.

She was half-dead on her feet by the time they got the murderer locked up, and she leaned heavily on Jack’s arm as they walked back to the hotel. He had never seen her like this before. If he said something, would she laugh at his protectiveness, shake off her cold and pallor, and retreat away from him? He liked her weight against his arm.

“I missed you terribly, Jack,” she said when they reached the hotel. “Come up and have a drink.” They were so far from everything here, far from society, far from anyone he knew, it felt almost like a dream when he followed her up to her room. 

She was still shivering when they reached the door, white of cheek, lips only a pale rose. Jack pulled her wet jacket off her, her hat, leaving her hair curling in pieces against her cheek, disarranged in the back, which only made her look more fetching.

"You're freezing. You need a hot bath, shall I call...?" He trailed off when her fingers touched his arm, cold and firm as marble even through his jacket. 

"You run a bath for me Jack," she says, lips parted, not quite closing even when the words are done. "And then warm me up."

The Phryne Fisher he knew in a hotter climate might have said those words saucily, putting distance between them even with their invitation, casting him in a certain role which he could either play or refuse to play, but which never gave him space change the game. This was a Phyrne who needed and wanted him, beneath her armor of wealth and confidence. This was the woman he came here to meet.

He started the bath--not to hot or it would shock her cold skin; it felt pleasantly warm to his chilled fingers. Then he stripped her out of her clothes with a brisk efficiency. Not the way he pictured it--he hardly got to enjoy this except to appreciate how easily his hands communicated with her body: turn, raise an arm, shrug shoulders so a damp dress could fall. 

He helped her into the tub where she shuddered with warmth and comfort. 

"Jack, you came," she said, as though seeing him for the first time.

"I did," he says. He could have turned away while she bathed, but he found himself instead a seat next to the tub. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and trailed a hand in the water. Not trying to touch her yet, but he would soon. He looked at the skin of her shoulders, cream above the lapping of white suds, and felt as though he were immersed in that hot bath along with her.

"And you found me," she added. Obvious enough, and too obvious for a wit as fine as hers, yet she seemed to take comfort in saying it.

"I did," he repeated. "And now I'm here."

"So you are." She extended a leg, now shell-pink, out of the water. There was a hint of archness in her tone that felt intolerable. Later, he promised himself, he would love even the part of her that always put distance between them. Now, if he let her, she would use that voice to weave the old spell of immobility, the one that always put an unbreakable pane of glass between them.

"Your water is getting cold," he said, his hand still under the surface. "Should I warm it up for you?"

He held her gaze, and her breath seemed to catch. This was the Phryne he needed, the creature of sensation, not fashion.

"Or should I get you a towel so you can step out?" he asked. She flicked a toe at him, sending a splash of warm water over his chest. A droplet slid down his neck, under his collar. 

"Towel," she said. 

When he turned back with the soft towel in his hands, she was standing, naked and glorious. She was so beautiful he hesitated before wrapping it around her, and cover her up again. He took her hand so she could step out of the tub, and then he wrapped the towel around her, closing it behind her, and she was in his arms.

She tilted her chin up to him and he kissed her, slow and languorous for the first time, then building in intensity, the towel between them only held up by the press of their bodies together. He wanted to carry her to the bed. He wanted to worship at her feet. Instead he pulled away and dried off her face with the corner of the towel. He touched it to drops of water on her neck. He pressed his hands over the soft fabric along the sides of her body then cradled it over the arch of her back, until all the safe bits of her torso were dry.

As if there a safe part of Miss Fisher that could be safe for him. He walked through the fire now, no matter what happened next. He dried the tops of her breasts and worked his way down until her nipples were exposed, and these he dipped his head to taste.

"I thought you were drying me off," she said .

"There is time for both, isn't there?" he asked, trying not to sound as breathless as she did.

"There's time for everything, Jack." She squeaked as he picked her up, the towel fell to the ground behind them.

She let him take the lead the first time, though she directed him enough to slow him down when he would have rushed, and speed him up when she wanted urgency. Afterward, she lay warm and flushed in his arms, and just as some constraint from their former lives together was about to descend, she climbed on top of him again.

This time she told him what she wanted and when she wanted it, and taught him how to touch her and how to truly taste her, with no care, it seemed, to his pleasure, but when hers came it was as though he felt echoes of those waves in his own body, though his next release did not come until long after, when the false dawn outside painted the room in shades of gray. 

"Phryne," he said, daring her first name, for only the second time in his life. He could only say it now because they lay so close to sleep. 

"Yes, Jack?" She sounded far away, already caught in dreams. 

"Was that romantic enough for you?" he asked.

"Oh, yes, I suppose,” she said, her voice wondering.

"You see, it doesn't come naturally to me." He was fishing, he knew, trying to draw this moment out even as he felt it fading.

"You do it rather well, though.” She patted his chest. “You know that."

"I wanted to hear you say it."

"You did beautifully," she said, and he felt as though he was receiving a benediction not only for his pursuit, but for their entire time as friends and colleagues, and this for mutual seduction, so long in coming.

He wanted to give her some compliment, but it did not seem right. She should be the one to give approval or withhold it, not to receive it. Did the moon need to be told it was beautiful?

He waited until her breath became soft and even across his skin, and her hair slid forward over her cheek, almost touching the corner of her mouth.

"Thank you," he said, too quiet for her to hear. "Thank you."


End file.
